The Milgram Experiment

The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychologyexperiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. They measured the willingness of study participants, men from a diverse range of occupations with varying levels of education, to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience; the experiment found, unexpectedly, that a very high proportion of people were prepared to obey, albeit unwillingly, even if apparently causing serious injury and distress. Milgram first described his research in 1963 in an article published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology[1] and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.[2]The experiments began in July 1961, in the basement of Linsly-Chittenden Hall at Yale University,[3] three months after the start of the trial of German Naziwar criminalAdolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the popular question at that particular time: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"[4] The experiments have been repeated many times in the following years with consistent results within differing societies, although not with the same percentages around the globe.[5]

Mentalist, Derren Brown reproduces the Milgram experiment in an episode of "The Heist."

Predictive programming, preconditioning, and over all mind control are the primary essence of this Channel 4 special.

The special was filmed over two weeks, during which Brown tells the viewer he has used various psychological tools, including conditioning, anchoring and suggestion, to get the group into a mental state in which they would willingly try to rob a security guard, without ever directly being told to do so. The anchoring supposedly involved creating an emotional state that combined feelings of invulnerability, euphoria and aggression, that was then tied to various stimuli, such as the colour green, the song "Can You Feel It" by The Jacksons, and the sight of a security guard uniform; which could then all be presented to the participants when it came time to perform "the heist". The participants were also asked to perform various deviant acts, such as stealing sweets from a store, which served both to condition participants to enjoy the feeling of criminality, and to identify the four members who would be most likely to perform the heist.